Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems: (American Poets Project #16)From the recollections of his youth in Michigan to the visionary longings of the poems written just before his death, Theodore Roethke embarked on a quest to restore wholeness to a self that seemed irreparably broken. In the words of editor Edward Hirsch, “He courted the irrational and embraced what is most vulnerable in life.” Hirsch’s selection and perceptive introduction illuminate the daring and intensity of a poet who, in poems such as “My Papa’s Waltz” and “The Lost Son,” reached back into the abyss of childhood in an attempt to wrest self-knowledge out of memory. Roethke’s true subject was the unfathomable depths of his own being, but his existential investigations were always shaped and disciplined by an exacting formal stringency, as equally at ease with Yeats’ vigorous cadence (“Four for Sir John Davies”) as with the spacious Whitmanian idiom on display in the virtuoso efforts of The Far Field. This gathering of Roethke’s works also includes several of his poems for children, and a generous sampling from his notebook writings, offering a glimpse of the poet at work with the raw materials of language and ideas. About the American Poets Project Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION xili | 1 |
from The Lost Son and Other Poems 1948 | 7 |
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS | 127 |
Copyright | |
1 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems: (American Poets Project #16) Theodore Roethke No preview available - 2005 |
Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems: (American Poets Project #16) Theodore Roethke No preview available - 2005 |
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AMERICAN POETS PROJECT beautiful disorder bones breath Carolyn Kizer child Christopher Smart comes creaking cries dance dark David Wagoner dead deep dirt dream edge editor Edward Hirsch eternal face father field fire fish flesh flowers Frau free verse grass greenhouse hands transplanting happy hear heart J. D. McClatchy JOHN BERRYMAN John Clare kiss Kitty-Cat Bird leaf leaves Library of America light lips live lost Louise Bogan minnows Mnetha moon morning mouse mouth moved night nose notebooks Open House poems poetry Praise pure ripple river rocks Roethke's roots rose sang shadow shape sigh silence sing Sir John Davies skin sleep slow slowly snake soft song soul spirit stay stem sticks stones sways sweet tendrils Theodore Roethke thing tree turned veins verse Waking walk waltz waves weeds What's wind worm